Through Halls of Blood and Night
by Nightglade
Summary: Cerwynn Mahariel has lost everything: her best friend, her clan and very nearly her life. Now, a great cursed dragon stands between her and the future of Ferelden. Collecting a group of misfits on the way was the least of her worries. [Dragon Age AU that incorporates multiple Wardens. Crossposted from AO3.]
1. Chapter 1

_Little bird, little bird, little bird  
What do you see?  
A picture perfect scene. _

_(…)_

 _It's hiding something  
It's trying too hard_

 _\- Little Bird by imogen Heap_

Shemlen would have called it the mouth to Hell, or whatever their Maker deemed to name his dungeon of fire and punishment. Except this place was cold, dreadfully so. A stiff breeze came through the cracks of old stone and almost hid the soft skitter of too many legs.

Cerwynn whirled around, bow already strung and loosed an arrow at the approaching horde of spiders. She hid the front most squarely in one of its beady eyes and readied herself to injure the legs of the next one so Tamlen might finish them off. He came charging past her, shield and sword out, and cut into the squishy spider flesh. By the end of the quick brawl their hunting gear was sporting a spattering of spider guts and blood.

"Well," Cerwynn fingered her bow. "Still think it's a good idea to explore this place?"

Tamlen shrugged. "We've had worse, haven't we? I dare say that the wolf-plague we had last year was a great deal scarier than these critters." He nudged the body closest to him with his shoe. "At least these aren't particularly intelligent."

A shiver ran over Cerwynn's spine at the memory of glowing eyes in the dark and she breathed out shakily. "Yeah… This place still freaks me out though."

"Then let's get going. The sooner we're through, the sooner we can get back to camp." He trudged through the spider corpses towards the only door not being obstructed by debris. It came open with an almighty croak that continued through the empty hallway behind it.

It seemed grander than the halls they'd past before, with ornamental pillars and half-ruined statues lining it. They were elegant, flowing figures with spears and scepters clasped in their hands. Only one in the long line had remained somewhat intact. On impulse Cerwynn reached out to the slim statue to remove the damp moss that covered its surface. It was a woman standing proudly upright with wings spanning out from her back. I was stunned by the familiarity of the effigy.

"Is that…Mythal?" She nearly jumped when Tamlen came up behind me to study her closer up. His hand found the small of her back easily and patted it. "Seems those scavengers weren't wrong after all. These ruins are definitely elven."

I shook his hand off. "That doesn't make sense, Tam. I've never seen this kind of architecture in any of the Keeper's scrolls. There's no record of underground dwellings."

"Oh, come on, lethallan." Tamlen nudged her side teasingly. "Perhaps these were moved here after the fall of Arlathan. Even the Keeper doesn't know everything."

I huffed. "It's Tevene if anything."

"Sure." He left her side with a noncommittal shrug and stalked towards the mosaics that covered the floor further up in the hallway. They both stooped low to admire the tiny embedded stones. Even after centuries of neglect they still gleamed through the dirt and dust. Cerwynn tried hard to place the visible lines of the circular mosaic in what I'd learned from the Keeper's books.

"I can't make out the image." She sighed disappointed.

"Maybe if I clean it up a bit." Tamlen stood up and retrieved the piece of cloth that he normally used to polish his blades and shield. She watched him kneel back down and began to scrub at the darkened ridges.

Out of the dark a loud click resounded and with a freezing cloud of mist the mosaic opened up.

Instinctively, Cerwynn reached for the bow on her back and pulled it out. She stumbled blindly through the cloying mist with a sudden sick feeling in her stomach. "Tamlen?!"

"I'm here!" Her clan mate's voice came from the far right of the hallway. She could just make out a vague shimmer of metal in that direction. "I think something opened up!"

"What?" Even to her own ears, she sounded panicked and weak.

Tamlen repressed a series of coughs before he answered. "I can see some sort of light at the opposite wall. Let me go take a look…"

She heard him shuffle across the now uneven ground towards where she had pressed herself against the wall. Only by the quick touch of his hand on her arm did she notice him pass her by and go through what – in her recollection – had been a solid stone structure just moments before.

A second later his voice wafted up to her from the mist. "There's another room here. It's clear, so you can come through."

"O..Okay." I cautiously edged around the corner of the wall towards his encouraging voice. A part of the stone had indeed been broken open by some sort of pressure, and the mist did dissipate when I wormed my way into the unveiled chamber.

The room I entered was relatively small compared to the rest of the underground complex, but it had some natural light coming in through paneling on the ceiling. It illuminated tombs in every corner of the room, but I barely gave them any notice. In the middle of the room stood a great mirror which reflected the meagre light in wide arcs.

Tamlen had already climbed up the few stairs separating the lower floor with the tombs from the mirror. He stood very still, Cerwynn thought, almost as if he was scared to disturb the interplay of light and the glass surface. It was enchanting, she had to admit, in a creepy I've-been-here-forever-undisturbed kind of way.

"Lethallin, what do you see?" Cerwynn's voice sounded abnormally loud in the quiet space.

"Ceri," She heard him swallow audibly. "It's so clear, almost untouched, you know. And there's something moving…"

"Moving?" Cerwynn forced herself to move closer as she felt the dread feeling return to her stomach. "Shouldn't you stand back then?"

She reached for his elbow and half-heartedly tried to get him stand back from the mirror. Unexpectedly, he shrunk back from her touch, closer to – what she could now see – the lazily flowing currents in the glass of the mirror.

"No! It's showing me places, Cerwynn, I want to see!" Tamlen stepped forward and placed a callused hand on the glass. Tendrils of mist or smoke appeared to escape where his flesh touched it, but he gave no sign of discomfort.

"You should see it too… A city! It's underground just like this one, but there is a great blackness hovering in that place. Not like here where the light is warm." An odd sort of grin transformed the face of her childhood friend and Cerwynn involuntarily reared back from the sight.

"I..I think you should come back down, lethallin. Please?" She inched backwards even as Tamlen's smile turned from joy to terror.

"It saw me!"

The mirror's surface was akin to a tempest now. Light streaking across the room in steadily building shadow shapes. The following moment a force impacted with Cerwynn's slight frame and she became afloat as if someone had kicked her feet out from under her. She heard her collision with the wall more than she felt it by the sound of falling debris. Her eyes burned from the light and she screwed them shut in agony.

The blackness greeted her ominously, just as Tamlen had said.

It was silent, yet somehow filled with screams.


	2. Chapter 2

_Explosions...on the day you wake up  
Needing somebody and you've learned  
It's okay to be afraid.  
But it will never be the same._

\- Explosions by Ellie Goulding

 _In the inky blackness that followed the flash of light, I was being cradled in strong arms. The world outside them did not quite seem to matter. There existed no fear, no pain, no time._

 _I'm so sorry…_

Cerwynn Mahariel came to inside the relative darkness of an aravel, the otherwise colorful canvas ceiling obscured in shadows coming in and out of focus above her, feeling utterly drained. She tried to at least get her eyes to focus enough to take in her surroundings, but they remained too heavy for her to keep them open long.

 _By the Dread Wolf, what happened?_

Her head was swimming and Cerwynn briefly wondered if she'd hit it during the hunt earlier. She did remember going out into the forest at noon to investigate the game trails surrounding our camp, but they'd found something else instead…

Nothing.

She groaned. _You've got to be kidding me._

Outside the aravel something moved in reaction to Cerwynn's frustration: a quick dash of light feet over the forest floor, and a child's voice, high-pitched in its excitement.

"Hahren, hahren, Cerwynn's awake!"

What followed was a veritable stampede of feet in the direction of the aravel and suddenly she felt very small and breakable inside her bed-roll. This must be how a baby tortoise felt just before the first great waves scooped him up and carried them away to sea. Cerwynn curled deeper inside her bedroll and braced herself for the inevitable onslaught. She keenly missed the comfort the dreams had offered.

 _Those had been nice,_ she thought forlornly _._

 _Wait a minute…_

 _I'm so sorry._ There had been that voice. A man's, somehow distinctly human-sounding, but that was ridiculous. No way the hunters would have let a shemlen venture so close to the camp.

"Please step back. Your clan-mate is probably still disoriented."

Cerwynn blinked. _Or not._

"What do you know, shemlen?" _Ah, Ashelle, you wonderful mother-hen._ She could just picture her nervously pacing around the aravel, her hands just a few seconds away from ruining the bun in her hair.

The voice from her 'dreams' answered in that same comforting tone he'd used on Cerwynn: "I don't want to interfere, madam." She scoffed. Oh, he was _good_. "But circumstances force me to put your general welfare above a quick reunion."

"He is right, lethallan," The Keeper joined in, her voice ever a fortress of sage advice. "I may have subdued the Cerwynn's ailment successfully with the old magic, but that still leaves us with the question of what exactly she was up against. I won't risk anyone else to it until I have my answer."

Okay, definitely no head-hitting then, but she still didn't feel sick…

The side of the aravel opened to admit Keeper Marethari inside. Before the canvas fell back closed behind her, Cerwynn could just catch a glimpse of two figures standing guard outside. The voice must belong to the tall one, his broader build unmistakably human. The other… Was that Fenarel?

"I'm glad to see you awake, da'len." Keeper Marethari greeted her softly. Cerwynn gave up on identifying the now shadow-figures behind the canvas to look her in the eye. Maybe they would hold the sense that was so clearly missing in this situation. They were grave.

"What happened, hahren?" Her voice croaked from disuse – which probably made her sound like an angry frog – but at least getting herself upright took a lot less effort.

"An awful lot, da'len," Marethari offered her a cup of water from a side-board. "Perhaps more than I feel comfortable burdening you with."

Cerwynn downed the water in one go and sighed in relief when the parchedness of her throat was assuaged. "I must confess I'm missing out on a whole sequence of events, Keeper. That might be a god place to start."

Marethari's frown grew. "This complicates things. I thought you might at least remember what happened to Tamlen, since he's still missing."

Hearing his name made her heart go heavy with dread. It's ice-cold grip reminded her of something, or rather someplace she'd been before. A flash of old stone hallways, an elvish temple but at the same time not, corpses clawing their way up from the ground…

 _The Mirror._

 _Oh no, Tamlen…_

She must have made some noise in my distress, because the Keeper moved to hold me faster than a cobra striking its prey. Her hand soothed my hair.

"Take your time, da'len. You've earned it."

Cerwynn opened my mouth to reassure her, but instead the truth came tumbling out.

"I think he might be dead."

And she told her everything.

 **[xxx]**

It was credit to Keeper Marethari's abilities that she had her up and about in just a few hours. Cerwynn's headache had disappeared after a few potions, but all discomfort seemed to have taken up residence in my heart. All my thoughts – my guilt – went to Tamlen and his uncertain fate.

Honestly, she'd wanted to confront her mysterious rescuer – a Grey Warden named Duncan, Marethari had informed her – about his knowledge of Tamlen's disappearance, but the warden had already left the camp. Soon she too would set off for the apparently Darkspawn-infested ruins in my search, as soon as she'd convinced Marethari she was stable enough.

Cerwynn's tour of camp had been fruitful so far: a new bow slung across her back and a fine pair of Grey Iron daggers at her side. Ilen had been reluctant to hand them over, even went so far as to try to distract her with a fancy story about a family heirloom. Nice try, but ultimately irrelevant to her resolve. (He did get the attention of their newest clan-mate, however, but Pol seemed easily excited.)

She slinked past Elder Paivel next, his voice easily carrying the ancient tale of the downfall throughout the glade. When Cerwynn was younger she'd enjoyed those maybe a bit too much, because they now left her rather devoid of pride. Tales of past glory didn't keep you alive out in the wild, adaption did. Luckily for her, Elder Paivel was satisfied with glaring holes in her back.

She swiftly continued on to the lower bonfire glade to face the inevitable: her surrogate mother. Ashelle was at her usual place, standing close to the fire, softly talking with the other gathered women.

Cerwynn crept up behind her and threw her arms around Ashelle's shoulders. "I'm back."

The following shriek had the potential to make me go deaf. "Cerwynn! Oh, my little Cerwynn!"

Her arms came around her as she held on tight. Cerwynn buried into her warmth and sighed happily. Honestly, she hadn't taken enough advantage of these motherly hugs in the last couple months. They had a remarkable power over her nervous system.

Worries, she'd learned, did never truly disappear though. No mother could make them completely go away. Not Ashelle, and perhaps not her birth mother either. The worries just came back, simply transformed into something more durable.

"I'm fine." Cerwynn's voice came out muffled against her shoulder. There was a tell-tale itch behind her eyes, so she started blinking the tears back ferociously.

Ashelle, too, was shaking in her arms and she wondered if she'd been doing the exact same thing before I woke up. "Don't you dare do that to me again, Cerwynn. I didn't invest years of my life into teaching you common sense, so you could just throw it out the window whenever a pretty boy asks you to."

"He's my friend. And for the record I didn't want to go in." Cerwynn nearly choked on my next words. "Now he's probably dead."

 _Because of me._ The words didn't leave her lips, but the implication hung in the air between them. Everything suddenly seemed a lot more final.

"Not your fault, Ceri. Never your fault." They were the words of a mother to the child she loved, and as such they left her with a bitter aftertaste.

 _But it is._

Her lack of reply must have clued Ashelle in, because she softly pushed against Cerwynn, so that they were now at arm's length. Her eyes searching her face for the inevitable strain of guilt. "You want to make it right."

"Yes." It came out as a whisper.

She nodded resignedly. "Take Fenarel with you, he's a decent boy."

"I will." _No way._ If that ruin really turned out to contain Darkspawn, Cerwynn wouldn't risk exposing him to them.

"Little liar." She tapped her nose in retaliation. "Maybe I should tell you a story."

"Now?"

Ashelle considered her for a moment. "No, not just yet. When you come back I'll tell you. Consider it motivation."

"I'll hold you to it." She kissed her cheek and returned her hug for the last time.

"Come back safely, little Ceri."


	3. Chapter 3

_I just know there's no escape now,  
Once it sets its eyes on you,  
But I won't run,  
Have to stare it in the eye._

 _'_ _Stand My Ground' by Within Temptation_

They set out at dusk, Cerwynn in the lead with Merrill, the Keeper's apprentice, never more than a step behind and Fenarel guarding the rear. All three of them were tense and the forest seemed to pick up their mood and mimic it. The birds in the trees were eerily silent. Not even the greedy-bellied squirrels dashed through the forest growth.

Cerwynn kept her bow strung and peered between the trees for any moving shadows that betrayed another presence in the wood, but her eyes caught nothing but the softly swaying trees in the evening breeze. Her companions were remarkably less tense: Merill nearly skipping along the path as she walked towards what she considered valuable heritage. Fenarel was more attentive, but nothing but his hand playing at his dagger hilts betrayed what he was feeling outward.

Cerwynn swallowed her frustration at Merrill's callous attitude at Tamlen's fate. _Tamlen first, missy, and then we can worry about your fancy statues_ _._

Thus they trudged farther through the undergrowth, listening for the strangely absent sounds of critters. Eventually they wound up in the clearing Tamlen had encountered the cowardly shems that had pointed him towards the cave in the first place.

Cerwynn could feel her heart rate picking up at nearing their goal. She longed to see her best friend's face again, safe and unharmed, and she could almost imagine him walking up to her here, smiling, saying that everything was alright. Her arms would come up around him and they would stand there an eternity before returning to the warm clan campfire and sharing a cup of wine.

"Is it far still?" Merrill's high voice broke through her reverie. Shocking where her mind had just imagined Tamlen's stronger one.

She swallowed again and tried to ignore the pricking of her eyes. "No, the trail starts at the far side of the clearing." She indicated the thicker foliage to her far left.

Merrill clapped her hands. "Well, lead on then!"

The sound of the clap echoed eerily throughout the clearing and the surrounding wood, and Cerwynn felt the oppressive feeling she'd momentarily forgotten return in full.

"Be quiet." Fenarel hissed under his breath. "This place feels wrong." He'd finally removed his daggers from their scabbards. Cerwynn eyed the suddenly rigid set of his shoulders as they approached the start of the trail.

It descended into a slope towards where she knew the actual mouth of the cave began. In some places the overgrowth was so dense it threw the its snakig line into complete obscurity.

 _Should have brought a light._ Cerwynn cursed internally while she felt her insides work themselves into knots.

The unnatural quiet of the forest had been troubling by itself, a sign of danger that Cerwynn had been among the first lessons she'd been taught by her elders. Now, a second danger had joined the first. By trade, every hunter disliked going out in the dark. Too much chance of the predator becoming prey once the nasties used the darkness to get the jump on you.

"Tamlen sure knows how to pick his places." Fenarel murmured in an attempt to lighten the mood. Merrill had finally taken out her staff and called a witch light into life.

Cerwynn smiled wryly. "That he did."

"Let's just get to the ruins before dark." Even Merrills voice wavered. "At least there we'll be able to see where our feet are at."

"Yes, let's." Fenarel slinked past the two women and took point. Cerwynn and Merrill followed rather awkwardly as the night began to obscure the edges of the trail.

So they stumbled through the dark, pushing ferns aside and occasionally slipping through the mud. Of the three, Merrill definitely had it the worst. As a mage she'd never really had any reason to leave camp much overnight, even when they'd been forced to live in more friendly environments.

By the time they entered the mouth of the cave and saw the first signs of foreign architecture, she was breathing heavily. "This place better be worth it."

Cerwynn felt a stab of resentment. "Tamlen is _more_ than worth it."

The Mage blinked stunned. "Of course he is. I never meant…"

"It's okay."Fenarel sighed from up ahead. "We're all a bit on edge."

As if to underscore his point the heavy wooden doors that hid the actual ruins from view croaked with high, protesting sounds that made the hair on the back of my neck rise involuntarily. A strong smell of decay wafted out that Cerwynn, in the back of her mind, quickly attributed to the spider corpses she and Tamlen had left to rot on their way in.

Merrill tiptoed past the arachnids, her face scrunched up in disgust. "I can't say what made these spiders grow so big, but this underground temple is definitely at least Elvhen-inspired." She indicated the murals leading up to a second entrance door. "These depict Fenharel's betrayal of the other gods."

"The downfall of the Elvhen." Cerwynn mused. "Must me a popular theme with Tevinter supremacists at the time. Suited their inflated ego's just fine, I say."

For the first time during their impromptu rescue mission, a smile lit up the tiny mage's face. "Yes, I reckon it was so."

Meanwhile, Fenarel had begun to pry open the second door blocking their entrance, frowning at the stubbornness of the wood that had just been handled a few hours before. "You sure you came in this way?"

"Yes, there's no other trail leading in."

He huffed and kicked the door. "Well, then something's holding it back, because I can't get it to move at all."

Merrill twirled her staff suggestively in its direction but Cerwynn stilled the movement with a touch to her arm. "No blasts here. We don't want the roof to come down."

"Good point. Perhaps there's a lock involved?" She reasoned instead. "Maybe the Grey Warden decided to close the place up after he retrieved you?"

"Could be." Cerwynn's hand went into her pockets feeling around for the tell-tale coldness of steel and emerged with a roughened set of lock-picks. "Move aside, Fen, I'll get this door open in no time."

 **[xxx]**

What lay past the door was neither their friend nor a historical Dalish treasure. Cerwynn recoiled as an arrow rushed past her ear and buried itself in the heavy wood of the door. From the shadows sprang forth a figure that only vaguely resembled a humanoid form, limbs crooked and grey-skinned. Cerwynn found herself frozen as she looked straight into a mouth with the most impressive arrangement of sharp teeth she'd ever seen.

"Lethallan!" A bright flash flew of her shoulder as Merrill launched a barrage of spells at the shadows that kept detaching themselves from the darkness. Fenarel pushed her aside moments after, wanting to get his daggers in range of the advancing monstrosities. Cerwynn saw the metal glint in the faded light. Almost as in an afterthought her trembling hands went to her own weapon. She'd seen those things before. Only then they'd been ghastly apparitions on a rippling, glass surface, pinning her with their gaze over her best friend's shoulder.

The first shot she loosed sailed past her mark and she inwardly cursed the tremor in her hands as she readied another. This one rang more true, embedding itself in a shadow sneaking past Fenarel. So did the next, and the one after. Until every image she had from Tamlen in those last moments was lost to the haze of battle.

When the last shadow was turned into charred remains under Merrill's spellwork, the three of them stood breathing heavily in the darkness. Cerwynn felt her eyes strain and she knew she must have looked half-crazed to both her clanmates.

"What are these things?" Merrill nudged a skull by her feet cautiously with the end of her staff. "I've never seen their like before. Not even in the Keeper's scrolls."

Cerwynn swallowed. Flashes of Tamlen, the mirror and the _Grey Warden_ fighting for dominance in her mind. Together they formed a terrifying truth that made her gut clench. "They're Darkspawn."

"So they are." The darkness retreated from the bright torch in Grey Warden Duncan's hand. It was nice to be able to put a face to the voice, Cerwynn thought. He was younger than she'd expected, his grave voice very misleading.

He nodded solemnly at her. "You have good eyes."

"Or a vivid imagination." Cerwynn added wryly.

"If only."

"Warden Duncan, how did you..?" Merrill's voice sounded strained as if she could not quite comprehend how quickly her discovery was going downhill.

Duncan turned to her in consideration. "Well, I was looking for the mirror, but somebody unlocked the door I would have liked to use to keep the Darkspawn in." His eyes lingered on Cerwynn for a second. "But what's happened, has happened, is suppose."

Fenarel snorted. "How did _you_ get past these things if I may ask?"

"Much the same way as you. You have not been the only one fighting here." He motioned to the red spatter that decorated his armour. Cerwynn wondered at how many Darkspawn a Grey Warden could handle. He must have been smart enough to creep past most of the horde occupying the temple. "Still, I'd like to evade further conflict if possible, so…"

Cerwynn pushed her memories of Tamlen's terrified face to the back of her mind before she spoke up. "I'll show you."

 **[xxx]**

The mirror was still there just as it had been before she'd passed out. Tall, ominous and rippling restlessly. Cerwynn once again felt the nausea its presence caused spread from her center to every nerve and mate her skin itch uncomfortably. She flexed her fingers in order to distract herself from scratching up her arms and caught Duncan studying the movement from the corner of his eyes.

"We should talk about your illness after we deal with the cause." He unsheathed one of his short swords as he advanced up the dais where the mirror stood.

"I'm fine, honestly." The excuse sounded weak to even her own ears.

Duncan halted and regarded her over his shoulder. Behind that Grey Warden façade his eyes were sad, she thought surprised at his concern.

"No, we really _do_ have to talk." He indicated the blood that decorated them both. "I told your friends to clean up first, because Darkspawn blood is not a substance you want to handle lightly."

A shudder went through Cerwynn's spine as a cold sense of comprehension came to her. "You didn't ask me to. Which means…"

Duncan had turned to face her fully, there was no deceit in his eyes. "There's no running away from the Blight once you have it. No known cure but a life of service."

Cerwynn sucked in a startled breath. "Grey Wardens have the Blight?"

Duncan only inclined his head answer.

"If I do have the Blight as you say." She continued, her mind now whirring at a mile an hour. "Would I live?"

"For a while." He raised the short sword with a steady hand at the swirling surface of the mirror, gauging the angle of impact. "Even the adapted Warden strain cannot keep you alive forever, so in the end it's a choice of how quickly you want it to end." He brought the sword up and down a ways in a practiced swing. The mirror seemed to pulse more wildly than ever. "Or if you want to life to mean something more."

Cerwynn remembered once again Tamlen's captivation with the mirror and her own helpless revulsion at the sight of it. If she'd been stronger, she would have been able to drag him away and he would now be laughing at the notion of her leaving the clan. She'd loved him but he'd always been ignorant in the face of danger. Danger for him was that which had the potential to hurt the clan, the cruel outside world where he'd imagined everyone to be spiteful of the Dalish's past glory.

Now, something of that outside world had creeped into their little forest cocoon. Tamlen would have condemned the shems and never his own lack of caution. In the end the emergence of the Blight from the temple would have been his fault, his responsibility, but he would have stayed stubborn and blind , Cerwynn thought. So by default what would have been his burden to bear had become hers. She would not be so careless with it.

She didn't know what lay in the hearts of outsiders, but if there was any good to find in there, they'd be _worth_ saving from the same evil.

"When do we leave?"

"Sunrise."

The sword came down in force and with a great groining sound the mirror came down.


End file.
